Camps for Ages 6–7
Full-day camps, 9 a.m.–3 p.m.
Inspired by the museums’ unique collections, campers engage in hands-on science experiments and art-making activities that build observation skills and flex creative muscles. Throughout the week, campers connect what they see to their own experiences.
Children must be at least six years old as of the first day of their camp.
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June 11–15
Art Cat's Excellent Adventure: Museum Time Machine
Design and build a time machine that takes you on a blast to the past—or fast-forward into the future. Sketch art and architecture from ancient civilizations, the Renaissance, and the 21st century, and create a mixedmedia time capsule to tell people about your moment in time. Experiment with historical art-making techniques using clay, paint, and other materials—all with a modern twist. Create your own paintings, sculptures, drawings, and architectural models.
Creepy Crawly Slippery Slimy Science
Discover nature’s slimy, creepy-crawly, gigantic, and tiny oddities. Investigate how animals and plants survive in extreme environments, learn about weird prehistoric creatures, identify mystery slime, and more! Daily experiments delve into insect movement, habitats, and senses. Forays into the physical sciences and chemistry encourage observation and testing of phenomena. Sink your teeth—literally!— into a yeast experiment with rising bread, and find out for yourself whether yeast can blow up a balloon. Create emulsions and test what floats in slimy substances. Even build an obstacle course for worms!
June 18–22
Mini Monets: Explore Impressionism
Learn about Impressionism in the exhibition Impressionism in a New Light: From Monet to Stieglitz. Take your art supplies outdoors and experience what it’s like to create art en plein air. Use paint and learn how to mix and apply colors to show natural light and shadow. Invite your family and friends to a mini Salon des Refusés in the Children’s Studio at the end of the week.
Backyard Biology
Find out what local reptiles, amphibians, and insects are up to at this time of year! Compare the biodiversity of the urban green space around the museum to the plants and animals of a stream restoration project in nearby Schenley Park. Experiment with plant pigments and use your sense of smell to identify mystery garden plants. Use a microscope to compare the fur of arctic and local mammals. Look for bugs and slugs in leaf litter. Teleconference with Powdermill Nature Reserve, the museum’s environmenfull- day camps, 9 a.m.–3 p.m. 6–7 ages tal research center, to share your discoveries with our naturalists and scientists. Participants in this camp earn a Junior Field Research Certificate that permits them to borrow collection equipment at Powdermill Nature Reserve.
June 25–29
Art Olympics
Become an art athlete just in time for the 2012 Summer Olympics! Test your endurance in this art pentathlon, as you draw, paint, print, sculpt, and collage. Team up in art relays and make your own Art Olympics medals. Create a clay figure of an athlete in action inspired by athletes in art—swimmers, archers, and even discus throwers—in the museum’s collection.
Peculiar Paleontology
Investigate prehistoric life to the extreme! From gigantic titanosaurs to a micromonkey that could sit on your thumb, get an inside look at exciting discoveries made by researchers right here at our museum. Cover land, sea, and sky while hunting for unusual dinosaurs, pterosaurs, ichthyosaurs, birds, and mammals in our exhibition halls. Peek in on PaleoLab, and explore Bonehunters Quarry as it opens early just for you. Learn how scientists re-created the amazing Mesozoic Era in Dinosaurs in Their Time. Make a mask of your favorite prehistoric beast and experiment with dinosaur locomotion in a relay race. Discover how paleontologists move fossils from the field to the museum when you wrap a model fossil in plaster to take home.
July 2–6
Portrait Party
Discover artists who create portraits in unexpected ways! Experiment with different media and techniques as you draw, paint, and sculpt self-portraits and other portraits of imaginary characters, family, and friends.
July 9–13
Masters of Disguise: Artful Costumes
Become a museum detective and master the art of creating disguises! Design costumes inspired by artworks in the museum’s collection. Blend into your surroundings and find clues in the galleries to solve a museum mystery. Create a living” art gallery and share it with your family and friends.
Imagination Installation
Make art that’s larger than life! Create murals and large sculptures using a variety of media and found objects. Take part in building an art “installation” that fills the room and share it with your family and friends on the last day of camp. Transform your studio space into an imaginary world of sculpture, paintings, drawings, and structures.
Move It!
Can you outrun a cheetah or a T. rex? Wiggle like a worm? Shimmy like a slug? Do you have a hawk-eyed sense of sight? Every day of camp promises the discovery of new sensations as you explore sight, hearing, movement, and touch. Find out how all kinds of animals develop unique moves for survival and how they use their senses to outsmart rivals. Learn about record-breaking animal adaptations and test your own senses and reflexes. Investigate how animals move on land, in the water, underground, and through the air. Design an experiment to test materials that fly, glide, and float.
July 16–20
Dance Your "Art" Out
Five, six, seven, eight! Have fun creating art and dance for a Friday performance open to family and friends. Spend half of the day learning the moves with a dance teacher, and the other half creating colorful costumes and spectacular scenery with an art teacher.
Castles, Knights, Dragons: A Medieval Adventure
This camp is full. Please click here to place your name on the waitlist.
Lords and Ladies! Travel back in time and experience life during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Try your hand at metalsmithing, heraldry, textiles, architecture, and painting as you discover medieval mythology and monsters! If you participated in this camp last year, no need to worry: This summer you can experience all-new activities, games, and projects related to the magnificent Middle Ages!
Magic Menagerie
Say the magic word and get ready for an adventure of mythical proportions! Many of your favorite fantastic tales were crafted to explain the unexplainable—gigantic bones, frightening fangs, and other natural oddities. Reveal the science behind the stories, gasp at some of the most bizarre specimens in the museum’s collection, and let your imagination run wild as you create new stories of your own. Brew a special potion, inscribe a message in invisible ink, and conjure a magic box of tricks to take home. From dragons and mermaids to the tortoise and the hare, connect animal fact and fiction to our museum collection.
July 23–27
Mini Monets: Explore Impressionism
Learn about Impressionism in the exhibition Impressionism in a New Light: From Monet to Stieglitz. Take your art supplies outdoors and experience what it’s like to create art en plein air. Use paint and learn how to mix and apply colors to show natural light and shadow. Invite your family and friends to a mini Salon des Refusés in the Children’s Studio at the end of the week.
Kid Stuff: Games & Toys
This camp is full. Please click here to place your name on the waitlist.
From Calder’s mobile to a giant-sized sandwich, see works by artists who take a playful approach to making art. Bring your favorite stuffed animals, toys, or games to use as arrangements for still-life paintings. Map the museum and make a museumthemed board game. Get inspired by sculptures and portraits and make your own art character action-figure and trading cards to share with your new camp friends.
Rock On
Leave no stone unturned as you discover why geology rocks! Start by identifying rock, mineral, and fossil specimens in our exhibition halls. Find out how fossils form through experiments with the properties of mud and minerals. Handle real specimens from our educational collection to discover the many shapes, colors, and patterns of rocks and minerals. Edible experiments help you understand how rocks and minerals form. Take a field trip to nearby Schenley Park to examine historic rock layers and hunt for specimens to start your own collection. Dig for replica fossils in Bonehunters Quarry. Study the fluorescent properties of different materials and let them inspire your own glow-in-the-dark design.
July 30–August 3
Heroes, Myths & Legends
Fantastic tales of heroes, their supernatural powers, and battles of good versus evil in Greek, Roman, and Egyptian myths come to life in sculptures in the museum. Explore the magnificent Hall of Architecture, art galleries, and the Museum of Natural History’s Walton Hall of Ancient Egypt to find the hero who most inspires you. Invent your own symbols and mythological heroes, and create 2-D and 3-D art to tell your tales.
Houses for Toys
Become an architect for animals, a builder for baby dolls, or a carpenter for cuddly things! From the grandeur of the Hall of Architecture to the museum’s exquisite miniatures, finding ideas for your toys is easy. Design houses that are just the right size for tiny toys with architectural models and drawings.
Land of the Giants
This camp is all about dinosaurs! Explore Mesozoic mysteries from the terrific Triassic through the crazy Cretaceous. Enter the world of the dinosaurs as you explore ancient ecosystems replicated in our exhibition halls. Compare the skulls and teeth of predators and prey and investigate how dinosaurs digested food. Learn how bones become fossils by growing crystals under different conditions. See how your footprints size up to those of dinosaurs and other animals. Study specimens that predict colors and patterns of dinosaur skin, and watch your own dinosaur adaptations evolve as you make a Me-a-saurus.”
August 6–10
Art Olympics
This camp is full. Please click here to place your name on the waitlist.
Become an art athlete just in time for the 2012 Summer Olympics! Test your endurance in this art pentathlon, as you draw, paint, print, sculpt, and collage. Team up in art relays and make your own Art Olympics medals. Create a clay figure of an athlete in action inspired by athletes in art—swimmers, archers, and even discus throwers—in the museum’s collection.
Globetrotter
Walk in the footsteps of animals and people around the world and through time, from the prehistoric past to today’s world. Follow the footsteps of early humans across thousands of miles and decide how you would adapt to a changing world. Using the techniques of our ancestors, unleash your creativity through the challenge of constructing ice houses, clothing, and the written word. Dig deeper into the research of our own scientists as you analyze petroglyphs—ancient rock art—to understand the relationships between people and animals in changing environments. Unlock the mysteries of ancient animals, and inscribe your own petroglyphs as early humans did to tell the story of what you have discovered.
August 13–17
Animal Adventure
Hey, animal-loving kids! Enjoy stories of outrageous animal friends and learn how dogs and horses work alongside humans in different cultures. You will smile when you see how some animals show affection. Dig deep to find the animal inside you and uncover clues about why people act the way they do. Experiment with dog and cat food to figure out which ingredients come from nature, and create your own recipe for a healthy pet snack. How are modern pets different from their wild ancestors? Interpret cave paintings of prehistoric animals and get creative in your own mural honoring the animals in your life. Meet special animal guests from the museum’s Discovery Room and from an animal-friendly organization. The week finishes up with an open house that welcomes your family and friends to raise awareness about helping local animals!